Sarah Butrymowicz of The Hechinger Reporthas an interesting story in about the closure of Lighthouse Academy at the end of this school year because of poor academic performance. The new principal this year, Fannie Brown, is trying to keep the school alive, but ODE says closure is a done deal.

The Akron school board's decision to sit out the March primary and instead try for a new-money levy in November raises the stakes at the bargaining table for teachers, whose two-year contract expires this year.

Both sides agree that a negotiation demonstrating the teachers' willingness to sacrifice could help win support for a tax hike in tough times.

Give this to the young scientists of Akron Public Schools they know how to promote their science fair projects with catchy titles.

Here are some of the projects from middle school and high school students that will be on display Saturday at the districtwide Science, Math and Technology Expo at North High School: Better Cookies Through Science; Pampers vs. Pull-Ups; The Hink of Your Sink! and What Surface in My School Is the Most Contaminated With Bacteria?

A few weeks ago I wrote about a charter school created in the Liberty school district near Youngstown that is trying to open shop in Norton, an excellent rated district. I received some much-appreciated insight from Robert Guttersohn of the Youngstown Vindicator, who has been investigating the formation of the charter schools at Liberty. The Vindicator published his in-depth story on Sunday.

He's got some great details on how the plan to open the conversion charter schools within the district was sold to school board members.

Ohio Auditor Dave Yost placed Medina County’s Cloverleaf school district in fiscal emergency Tuesday because the district cannot overcome a nearly $600,000 deficit this June. The following year, the deficit will balloon to $2.6 million.

''The Cloverleaf Local School District has some difficult decisions to make in the coming weeks and months,'' Auditor Yost said. ''My office is ready to work with school officials and the commission to bring financial stability back to this struggling district.''

We had some incorrect information on a story today about plans for the new Firestone High School/Litchfield Middle School Project. It will be for grades 6 through 12, not 7 through 12. The elementary schools in the cluster still will be K-5. We've corrected the story online and we'll run a print correction tomorrow. The two other combined high/middle school projects, East and Buchtel, are 7-12 buildings.

North Hill parent Gina Lang shopped for schools for her three children Sunday at an informational fair at the Akron-Summit County Public Library that brought area school districts, charter schools and private schools under one roof.

StateImpact Ohio (NPR with local public radio stations) has been doing some good work tracking White Hat Management's applications to operate charter schools that would be sponsored by the state. See Molly Bloom's post here. So far she's found these interesting nuggets in the applications:

• Judit Puskas, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineer at the University of Akron, was named the Austin Chemical Co. chair in the engineering college. The chair is funded by the Austin Chemical Co. of Buffalo Grove, Ill.

The Akron school board voted Monday to pull a 5.9-mill levy from the March 6 ballot and pin all its hopes on passing a levy in the November presidential election.

Superintendent David James proposed removing the levy from the ballot as the first order of new business in the first meeting of the year, mainly because a March 6 election leaves officials little time to organize an effective campaign.

I was pleased to see Daniel Willingham make the list at 33 out of 121. Willingham is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Virginia who is an important voice in the emerging field of Mind, Brain and Education. I'm surprised to see him on the list, however.

Bill Stetler announced last night that he is resigning July 31. Stetler was named Northwest superintendent in 2008 and led the effort to pass a 1 percent earned income tax in 2010 after 10 failures in five years at the ballot.

WASHINGTON: The No Child Left Behind education law was cast as a symbol of possibility, offering the promise of improved schools for the nation's poor and minority children and better prepared students in a competitive world.

Yet after a decade on the books, President George W. Bush's most hyped domestic accomplishment has become a symbol to many of federal overreach and Congress' inability to fix something that's clearly flawed.

The National Education Policy Center in Colorado has released its 13th annual Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations report, a comprehensive look at the national charter school industry. I won't have time to read the report today, but it's available online here.

The report's key finding is that growth in the for-profit sector has leveled off over the last three years, but companies are rapidly boosting enrollment in their existing schools and expanding into other services. Non-profit charter enrollment is growing even faster, according to the report. Akron-based White Hat Management operates 46 charter schools, according to the report. Virginia-based Imagine Schools is the largest for-profit in the country with 83 schools, including 2 in Akron.

The Entertainment Software Association Foundation selected Emily Russo of Uniontown for a $3,000 scholarship at Kent State. She is one of 30 female and minority students across the nation who received awards for the 2011-12 school year. She is pursuing a career in computer and video game development.